Or... maybe he was a buyer for a company or charitable organisation. Sony gave him poor service on some item or other so now he won't touch their TVs, laptops, video projectors etc. in any capacity. Seems reasonable to me.
Easy. The vast majority of window managers on any OS, when a new window is opened, will give it focus. Most of the time that's probably the wrong thing to do (in my opinion) but that is the default behaviour. I like to browse through pages on Ebay, Wikipedia, Slashdot etc., and when I see a link I like I middle-click on it. In Firefox and IE7 this opens a new tab without switching focus and loads the page in the background. On IE6 it opens a new window (in fact you have to right-click then select open in new window), I then have to ALT-TAB or click back to my original window to carry on browsing. Most people that I've pointed this out to have then tried browsing with tabs for a few days and never gone back. On IE6 if you're browsing with the window maximised then open a link in a new window, the new window will not be maximised, so again I have to mess around to carry on browsing the way I want.
I'm usually totally against MDI type arrangements, of which tabs I guess are really a derivative. However, I have to say that I find tabbed browsing extremely efficient and intuitive.
When I was at school 15 years ago the network system was Ethernet (Acorn/BBC Micro based). The network traffic appeared at a fixed memory-mapped location on every station, and passwords were sent plaintext. The root passwords were easily obtained with a simple program that monitored this address on any workstation and wrote the results to a file. A group of us could then remotely access any workstation, monitor the screen buffer and display locally, and even take control of the keyboard.
When they finally upgraded to a PC-based network we figured out that the IT manager chose passwords using unusual words from various posters on the walls of the PC lab. We found the password with a bit of trial and error, used it once and created a stash of accounts with names that sounded like staff members but had full admin rights.
Back then they figured out the BBC hacks and I was banned from the network for a few weeks. They never did work out that we had full access to the PC system. I never got more than a verbal telling off - I'm not sure they even spoke with my parents - these days I would probably have been expelled or arrested. I think they worked on a 'friends close, enemies closer' because I saved them a fair bit of money in support costs when things went wrong.
I think I got banned from computer usage for an entire year because I was deleting a HKLM/Software key belonging to MyWebSearch or some other piece of adware/spyware.
That's entirely unreasonable and action should have been taken against the school. If the school doesn't understand the technology, they should tread very carefully before taking action against pupils. Yes, you were interfering with the system, but for good motives and at worst that should be considered a misdemeanor, not worthy of a long-term ban.
Suppose a pupil was walking down the corridor and saw a live electrical cable hanging loose. A sharp pupil might find the distribution board and isolate the corridor before reporting the problem, to leave the cable there for the shortest length of time (this is exactly the sort of thing I used to do at school). Now, maybe the pupil should be disciplined for interfering with the electrical system, something that could have serious consequences, but they should also be thanked (maybe off the record) for doing the right thing. Hopefully, in a decent school, the net effect would be nothing more than a verbal wrist slapping. Removing a registry key isn't that urgent/important, but then the consequences aren't that severe either, at worst re-imaging the hard disk.
In reality, teachers are scared because they don't understand the technology and know that most pupils understand it much better than they do. Therefore they feel the need to come down hard on anyone viewed as being out of line.
But if you read the article, there's no indication that the pupil was "mouthing off". I'm sure the teacher would have mentioned that in the detailed detention report if he had. It looks as if the pupil explained calmly and reasonably that he was indeed doing his work in a perfectly valid way, but the teacher was insisting that the pupil do his work the teacher's way. Maybe there's times when it would be right to insist on that, but this doesn't look like one of them.
When I was at school I was pretty good at Maths (UK). I would do my best to follow what the teacher said when working through examples as a class, but when it came to doing exercises on our own, unless the question specified a particular method I would work through the problem my own (usually quicker) way. Teachers that were just sitting in and weren't really maths people would look over my shoulder and get very upset with me for 'not doing it right'. Decent maths teachers who knew their stuff had no problem with me, so long as they were happy that I understood the conventional approach too.
If the teacher said 'everyone take out their Bic pens and write this essay' and repremanded a pupil for using a different brand of pen, would anyone agree with the teacher?
It's quite likely that the teacher has no understanding of the concept of a generic web browser, and believes that WWW == The Internet == Internet Explorer. In the same way people insist on referring to any computer-based presentation as 'a Powerpoint'. Sometimes it might be right for teachers to insist on a particular piece of software - e.g. if they are specifically teaching how to do something esoteric with that software. If the assignment is generic web-based research then any web browser installed on the computer should be acceptable.
I was always getting into trouble for this sort of thing at school (14 years ago!) and it was nearly always because the staff didn't actually really understand what they were asking. Not just not understanding in Computer Science graduate terms, but clearly hadn't even read Windows for Dummies. I usually got away without the detentions because I would be called back in later on to fix the computer that the teacher had deleted command.com from "to save some space".
This is definitely something that needs to be worked out. An interesting parallel in the UK is TV licensing. You need a TV license per household, but what does that actually mean? What about portable TVs? In car TVs? The answer is that any household that has joint tenancy only requires one license, and the simple way that is usually tested is if there are individual locks on the bedroom doors or separate contacts (in the case of rental) then it is not joint tenancy. Outside of the home any battery operated device for any members of the household does not require a license, any mains-operated device does. So lots of university students have rechargable battery-opereated TVs to use in halls/dorms.
Perhaps there could be parallels for music licensing - one copy per household can be played in any/all rooms in the house and any/all portable battery-operated devices. Mains operated devices outside of the home would need a separate 'license'.
I appreciate the theological question, the point I was trying to make is that too much casual theological debate is argument over definitions - I was trying to demonstrate that the original poster's understanding of the concept of infinity is flawed, and thus unsafe for using as a basis for categorical argument.
I am a committed Christian and I believe that God is absolutely in control of everything that happens, but chooses to tolerate evil as a necessity for true free will for a period of time. I'm impressed that the idea is obvious to you as an atheist (I don't mean that in any patronising sense) because a lot of people just can't get over that one.
God is infinite, which means by definition that he includes everything...
That's a nonsense definition of infinity. Consider this: there are an infinity of numbers from 1 to 2 (1.1, 1.01, 1.001... 1.11, 1.101... etc). There are an infinity of numbers between 2 and 4 but that second infinity includes none of the numbers in the former infinity. Both series are infinite, both have a definite beginning and a definite end, but both are entirely separate.
Also interesting to note, intuitively the infinity between 2 and 4 ought to be twice the size (whatever "size" means when we are dealing with infinity) of the infinity between 1 and 2. In fact, they are entirely the same size. This can be proven by noting that every number between 2 and 4 can be obtain by multiplying each number between 1 and 2 by 2.
I understand what you are trying to say, but it's important to realise that argument involving concepts like "infinity" are not simple. God may be "infinite" (whatever that means - infinite what??) but that doesn't by neccesity mean God includes everything (that's pantheism).
Woooahhh less of the conspiracy theories. This is a discussion site, I'm discussing - why are you so bothered? In any case I'm British and living in England so I have no desire to influence anything. I am interested in discussing because US elections have a worldwide impact, and I'm sure that the UK will go electronic eventually so what happens in the US again will affect me.
I didn't claim it's mil-spec. I used something called an analogy. I have experience developing mil-spec and drew on that experience. It's not a huge leap of the imagination to see that developing something for government elections might be similar to developing for military use in terms of the level of attention to detail and adherence to contract specifics. All I'm saying is that in my experience when you're developing hardware/software for something critically important, if you sign a contract saying that you will notify any changes, that means you will notify any changes. It's as simple as that. I'm not making any kind of 'wild speculation'. Either the story is false - they did in fact notify the changes - or else the basic details are true, in which case it's a major problem, whatever defence they may think they have.
Imagine (another analogy here) you asked me to build a house to your specifications, and to discuss any changes with you. Does that require interpretation? Maybe the first time I asked something absolutely trivial you might clarify things, but that would be your choice. It would be entirely wrong for me to forge ahead and decide for myself what might be excluded from the terms.
By the way, I'm not that familiar with US law, but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be a trial by jury. I'm happy to be corrected.
...until the secretary of state has been notified in writing and has determined that the proposed change or modification does not impair the accuracy and efficiency of the voting systems sufficient to require a reexamination and approval...
So all they had to do was write to the secretary of state, explain that they had just moved a few things around, and wait for confirmation that the secretary agrees that the changes don't require reexamination. That's a pretty standard thing to have to do for any company that makes things for government or military. It doesn't matter if it's the component layout, colour, font on the front panel legends - if it's changed then you notify the changes. It's absolutely amateur and shows a total lack of understanding of the importance of the job they are doing if they don't know this.
I've done a bit of work on mil-spec hardware in the past and even as an engineer intern I was fully aware that every resistor and capacitor on the circuit board was made to a specification and couldn't be changed without notification. If this is how they treat hardware that can be easily inspected and compared with specs, I shudder to think what the underlying software is like.
Back to today and reality. The reality of capitalism is what you said, which I quoted. If something has value, but is impossible to sell for profit, pretty soon no one will be able to sell it. I think eventually that means the death of music as we know it.
Think back about 90 years. Someone came up with the idea that sound could be transmitted and received wirelessly. Really useful for ships at sea, and letting Europe speak with America. This system could be used to transmit music from theatres and opera houses, but what would be the point - no-one would do that because they couldn't possibly make any money from it. Could they?
Every time there has been a revolutionary technology introduced the death of music has been predicted. Radio, television, open real tapes, cassette tapes. There was a lawsuit in the UK when Amstrad brought out a twin-deck cassette recorder with high-speed dubbing, because the record labels thought it's only possible use was piracy. CDs introduced a format that was more convenient than anything else in existance and not suitable for home recording, which the record companies loved. Then minidisc, CDRs came along and eventually MP3 players.
Television has made visual performance art available 24/7 practically for free, yet certainly in the UK theatres continue to exist and stage performers continue to make plenty of money.
In the UK there was no independent commercial radio when my Dad was a boy, it was all state controlled. Illegal and semi-legal pirate (ship) radio was what teenagers listened to in the 60s, and the government here made huge efforts to stamp it out. Eventually commercial licenses were granted and 'pirate' radio became mainstream, with BBC Radio 1 eventually adopting the same programming style.
Music will survive - in fact thrive - without the big record labels.
The poster then makes a link himself, because the email was personal, that means the reference to him owning slashdot must be right, therefore slashdot belongs to him.
I think the point is that the writer argued that the subject of the email was misleading, which is part of the anti-spam legislation in his state. His reasoning (tongue-in-cheek at this point, I believe) is that if the judge rules that it's not misleading, then it must in fact be true that http://slashdot.org/ is his site. He is therefore claiming ownership of Slashdot by judicial fiat (in jest).
OK, so by that definition, punching someone in the face is stealing. You deprive them of their good looks, deprive them of the absence of pain and deprive them of a blood-free shirt. We should abolish laws on physical assault and just call it all 'stealing'. In fact, surely homicide is stealing - the theft of life? Gosh, we could do this all day...
It's not stealing because stealing (i.e. theft) is the crime of permenantly depriving someone of their property; e.g. in English law "...a person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it...". When a track is downloaded from the internet, no property has been appropriated, no-one has been deprived of anything. I'm not say it's not illegal, but it's not stealing. Punching someone in the face would be criminal in most circumstances, but it wouldn't be 'theft of their good looks' or some other convolution to make it sound like stealing.
As has been amply explained by others, copyright laws are a (relatively) modern contrivance intended to enable a minory of talented artists to generate sufficient revenue from their arts that they need not 'keep the day job', because as a society we (presumably) feel that their arts enrich society as a whole and we would not benefit from them so readily if they had to hold down another job. A multi-billion dollar industry has grown up around these artists, such that the industry is far richer and more powerful than most of the artists themselves, and they are desparately trying to protect their revenue stream. One of their strategies is to try to redefine copyright infringement as 'theft' which they have been largely successful in doing, even though it's utter nonsense.
The notion of 'intellectual property' has also been invented in order to confuse the issue. Sadly this is still all about companies trying to extract the maximum revenue from an idea or invention - often something that the company themselves neither thought of nor developed. There is a place for some sort of 'ownership of ideas' so that plagiarism is avoided, but this unfortunately has little to do with copyright.
I think it means that they modified their own companie's domain - in other words they changed the From: field in their email message so it looked internal. Not exactly high-tech but probably enough to fool the majority of users. Their incoming mail servers shouldn't allow those through, but I'm sure most of them do.
Common usage of something doesn't suddenly make it correct.
In this case, yes it does. Way before computer hardware was a consumer product, the standard that a kilobyte is 1024 bytes was established. It's a bit like a nautical mile - within a particular field a well-known unit has a very specific and different meaning. When the manufacturers started selling hard drives to the public they were well aware of the specific meaning of Kilo and Mega in the context of computer hardware but deliberately took the SI definitions in order to make their drives appear bigger. That's not the fault of the computer scientists who coined those phrases. Do you think if the computer scientists had chosen terms that made hard drives look bigger and that the manufacturers would have looked worse by using the 'correct' SI definitions they would have gone for it?
The idea behind moderation is that it's meant to be positive, so that the truly informative, insightful, interesting or funny posts rise out of the general hubub. The negative moderation, as far as I can see, is intended to increase the signal to noise ratio without unduly affecting genuine posters.
I've found a few times that I've been moderated overrated for posting a contentious comment: in other words, some moderators misuse their points to give their opinion on the conclusion that is being stated. Really moderation should be about the quality of the post: if something is well-argued and presents and interesting perspecive then it deserves to rise above the crowd, even if the conclusion doesn't fit with some people's views. The danger with diametrically opposed mods is that it will turn into a fight between mods to promote posts that fit with their pre-conceived opinions and demote posts that don't.
Your idea of '-1, Misinformed' seems like a good idea at first blush, but the problem is that it's giving moderators license to comment on the conclusion of the post, rather than the quality of the post. It's much better to let the posts with decent references/links, well-reasoned arguments etc. to rise to the fore than have moderators blasting down posts because they think the author got it wrong. That's what replies are for.
Slashdot Mirror
Or... maybe he was a buyer for a company or charitable organisation. Sony gave him poor service on some item or other so now he won't touch their TVs, laptops, video projectors etc. in any capacity. Seems reasonable to me.
Think about it why should we use tabs, really?
Easy. The vast majority of window managers on any OS, when a new window is opened, will give it focus. Most of the time that's probably the wrong thing to do (in my opinion) but that is the default behaviour. I like to browse through pages on Ebay, Wikipedia, Slashdot etc., and when I see a link I like I middle-click on it. In Firefox and IE7 this opens a new tab without switching focus and loads the page in the background. On IE6 it opens a new window (in fact you have to right-click then select open in new window), I then have to ALT-TAB or click back to my original window to carry on browsing. Most people that I've pointed this out to have then tried browsing with tabs for a few days and never gone back. On IE6 if you're browsing with the window maximised then open a link in a new window, the new window will not be maximised, so again I have to mess around to carry on browsing the way I want.
I'm usually totally against MDI type arrangements, of which tabs I guess are really a derivative. However, I have to say that I find tabbed browsing extremely efficient and intuitive.
When I was at school 15 years ago the network system was Ethernet (Acorn/BBC Micro based). The network traffic appeared at a fixed memory-mapped location on every station, and passwords were sent plaintext. The root passwords were easily obtained with a simple program that monitored this address on any workstation and wrote the results to a file. A group of us could then remotely access any workstation, monitor the screen buffer and display locally, and even take control of the keyboard.
When they finally upgraded to a PC-based network we figured out that the IT manager chose passwords using unusual words from various posters on the walls of the PC lab. We found the password with a bit of trial and error, used it once and created a stash of accounts with names that sounded like staff members but had full admin rights.
Back then they figured out the BBC hacks and I was banned from the network for a few weeks. They never did work out that we had full access to the PC system. I never got more than a verbal telling off - I'm not sure they even spoke with my parents - these days I would probably have been expelled or arrested. I think they worked on a 'friends close, enemies closer' because I saved them a fair bit of money in support costs when things went wrong.
Okay dokay, toodle pip.
I think I got banned from computer usage for an entire year because I was deleting a HKLM/Software key belonging to MyWebSearch or some other piece of adware/spyware.
That's entirely unreasonable and action should have been taken against the school. If the school doesn't understand the technology, they should tread very carefully before taking action against pupils. Yes, you were interfering with the system, but for good motives and at worst that should be considered a misdemeanor, not worthy of a long-term ban.
Suppose a pupil was walking down the corridor and saw a live electrical cable hanging loose. A sharp pupil might find the distribution board and isolate the corridor before reporting the problem, to leave the cable there for the shortest length of time (this is exactly the sort of thing I used to do at school). Now, maybe the pupil should be disciplined for interfering with the electrical system, something that could have serious consequences, but they should also be thanked (maybe off the record) for doing the right thing. Hopefully, in a decent school, the net effect would be nothing more than a verbal wrist slapping. Removing a registry key isn't that urgent/important, but then the consequences aren't that severe either, at worst re-imaging the hard disk.
In reality, teachers are scared because they don't understand the technology and know that most pupils understand it much better than they do. Therefore they feel the need to come down hard on anyone viewed as being out of line.
Thats why I put "(UK)" after the first time I wrote "maths". In the UK it's correct to write "maths" as a contraction of "mathematics".
But if you read the article, there's no indication that the pupil was "mouthing off". I'm sure the teacher would have mentioned that in the detailed detention report if he had. It looks as if the pupil explained calmly and reasonably that he was indeed doing his work in a perfectly valid way, but the teacher was insisting that the pupil do his work the teacher's way. Maybe there's times when it would be right to insist on that, but this doesn't look like one of them.
When I was at school I was pretty good at Maths (UK). I would do my best to follow what the teacher said when working through examples as a class, but when it came to doing exercises on our own, unless the question specified a particular method I would work through the problem my own (usually quicker) way. Teachers that were just sitting in and weren't really maths people would look over my shoulder and get very upset with me for 'not doing it right'. Decent maths teachers who knew their stuff had no problem with me, so long as they were happy that I understood the conventional approach too.
It's quite likely that the teacher has no understanding of the concept of a generic web browser, and believes that WWW == The Internet == Internet Explorer. In the same way people insist on referring to any computer-based presentation as 'a Powerpoint'. Sometimes it might be right for teachers to insist on a particular piece of software - e.g. if they are specifically teaching how to do something esoteric with that software. If the assignment is generic web-based research then any web browser installed on the computer should be acceptable.
I was always getting into trouble for this sort of thing at school (14 years ago!) and it was nearly always because the staff didn't actually really understand what they were asking. Not just not understanding in Computer Science graduate terms, but clearly hadn't even read Windows for Dummies. I usually got away without the detentions because I would be called back in later on to fix the computer that the teacher had deleted command.com from "to save some space".
Striker, Striker, Striker! *bosh*
Perhaps there could be parallels for music licensing - one copy per household can be played in any/all rooms in the house and any/all portable battery-operated devices. Mains operated devices outside of the home would need a separate 'license'.
I had always assumed that it's a play on words: Radio Amateur, Radio Am, Ham.
I am a committed Christian and I believe that God is absolutely in control of everything that happens, but chooses to tolerate evil as a necessity for true free will for a period of time. I'm impressed that the idea is obvious to you as an atheist (I don't mean that in any patronising sense) because a lot of people just can't get over that one.
That's a nonsense definition of infinity. Consider this: there are an infinity of numbers from 1 to 2 (1.1, 1.01, 1.001 ... 1.11, 1.101 ... etc). There are an infinity of numbers between 2 and 4 but that second infinity includes none of the numbers in the former infinity. Both series are infinite, both have a definite beginning and a definite end, but both are entirely separate.
Also interesting to note, intuitively the infinity between 2 and 4 ought to be twice the size (whatever "size" means when we are dealing with infinity) of the infinity between 1 and 2. In fact, they are entirely the same size. This can be proven by noting that every number between 2 and 4 can be obtain by multiplying each number between 1 and 2 by 2.
I understand what you are trying to say, but it's important to realise that argument involving concepts like "infinity" are not simple. God may be "infinite" (whatever that means - infinite what??) but that doesn't by neccesity mean God includes everything (that's pantheism).
Woooahhh less of the conspiracy theories. This is a discussion site, I'm discussing - why are you so bothered? In any case I'm British and living in England so I have no desire to influence anything. I am interested in discussing because US elections have a worldwide impact, and I'm sure that the UK will go electronic eventually so what happens in the US again will affect me.
I didn't claim it's mil-spec. I used something called an analogy. I have experience developing mil-spec and drew on that experience. It's not a huge leap of the imagination to see that developing something for government elections might be similar to developing for military use in terms of the level of attention to detail and adherence to contract specifics. All I'm saying is that in my experience when you're developing hardware/software for something critically important, if you sign a contract saying that you will notify any changes, that means you will notify any changes. It's as simple as that. I'm not making any kind of 'wild speculation'. Either the story is false - they did in fact notify the changes - or else the basic details are true, in which case it's a major problem, whatever defence they may think they have.
Imagine (another analogy here) you asked me to build a house to your specifications, and to discuss any changes with you. Does that require interpretation? Maybe the first time I asked something absolutely trivial you might clarify things, but that would be your choice. It would be entirely wrong for me to forge ahead and decide for myself what might be excluded from the terms.
By the way, I'm not that familiar with US law, but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be a trial by jury. I'm happy to be corrected.
But the story gives the rest of the clause:
...until the secretary of state has been notified in writing and has determined that the proposed change or modification does not impair the accuracy and efficiency of the voting systems sufficient to require a reexamination and approval...
So all they had to do was write to the secretary of state, explain that they had just moved a few things around, and wait for confirmation that the secretary agrees that the changes don't require reexamination. That's a pretty standard thing to have to do for any company that makes things for government or military. It doesn't matter if it's the component layout, colour, font on the front panel legends - if it's changed then you notify the changes. It's absolutely amateur and shows a total lack of understanding of the importance of the job they are doing if they don't know this.
I've done a bit of work on mil-spec hardware in the past and even as an engineer intern I was fully aware that every resistor and capacitor on the circuit board was made to a specification and couldn't be changed without notification. If this is how they treat hardware that can be easily inspected and compared with specs, I shudder to think what the underlying software is like.
Back to today and reality. The reality of capitalism is what you said, which I quoted. If something has value, but is impossible to sell for profit, pretty soon no one will be able to sell it. I think eventually that means the death of music as we know it.
Think back about 90 years. Someone came up with the idea that sound could be transmitted and received wirelessly. Really useful for ships at sea, and letting Europe speak with America. This system could be used to transmit music from theatres and opera houses, but what would be the point - no-one would do that because they couldn't possibly make any money from it. Could they?
Every time there has been a revolutionary technology introduced the death of music has been predicted. Radio, television, open real tapes, cassette tapes. There was a lawsuit in the UK when Amstrad brought out a twin-deck cassette recorder with high-speed dubbing, because the record labels thought it's only possible use was piracy. CDs introduced a format that was more convenient than anything else in existance and not suitable for home recording, which the record companies loved. Then minidisc, CDRs came along and eventually MP3 players.
Television has made visual performance art available 24/7 practically for free, yet certainly in the UK theatres continue to exist and stage performers continue to make plenty of money.
In the UK there was no independent commercial radio when my Dad was a boy, it was all state controlled. Illegal and semi-legal pirate (ship) radio was what teenagers listened to in the 60s, and the government here made huge efforts to stamp it out. Eventually commercial licenses were granted and 'pirate' radio became mainstream, with BBC Radio 1 eventually adopting the same programming style.
Music will survive - in fact thrive - without the big record labels.
I think the point is that the writer argued that the subject of the email was misleading, which is part of the anti-spam legislation in his state. His reasoning (tongue-in-cheek at this point, I believe) is that if the judge rules that it's not misleading, then it must in fact be true that http://slashdot.org/ is his site. He is therefore claiming ownership of Slashdot by judicial fiat (in jest).
Try "radio ham" (US) or "radio amateur" (UK).
OK, so by that definition, punching someone in the face is stealing. You deprive them of their good looks, deprive them of the absence of pain and deprive them of a blood-free shirt. We should abolish laws on physical assault and just call it all 'stealing'. In fact, surely homicide is stealing - the theft of life? Gosh, we could do this all day...
As has been amply explained by others, copyright laws are a (relatively) modern contrivance intended to enable a minory of talented artists to generate sufficient revenue from their arts that they need not 'keep the day job', because as a society we (presumably) feel that their arts enrich society as a whole and we would not benefit from them so readily if they had to hold down another job. A multi-billion dollar industry has grown up around these artists, such that the industry is far richer and more powerful than most of the artists themselves, and they are desparately trying to protect their revenue stream. One of their strategies is to try to redefine copyright infringement as 'theft' which they have been largely successful in doing, even though it's utter nonsense.
The notion of 'intellectual property' has also been invented in order to confuse the issue. Sadly this is still all about companies trying to extract the maximum revenue from an idea or invention - often something that the company themselves neither thought of nor developed. There is a place for some sort of 'ownership of ideas' so that plagiarism is avoided, but this unfortunately has little to do with copyright.
Oh, and there is another thing to consider, slashdot is NOT a news site.
Look up... a little bit more... there it is: "NEWS FOR NERDS. STUFF THAT MATTERS."
Do you mean a Difference Engine?
I think it means that they modified their own companie's domain - in other words they changed the From: field in their email message so it looked internal. Not exactly high-tech but probably enough to fool the majority of users. Their incoming mail servers shouldn't allow those through, but I'm sure most of them do.
In this case, yes it does. Way before computer hardware was a consumer product, the standard that a kilobyte is 1024 bytes was established. It's a bit like a nautical mile - within a particular field a well-known unit has a very specific and different meaning. When the manufacturers started selling hard drives to the public they were well aware of the specific meaning of Kilo and Mega in the context of computer hardware but deliberately took the SI definitions in order to make their drives appear bigger. That's not the fault of the computer scientists who coined those phrases. Do you think if the computer scientists had chosen terms that made hard drives look bigger and that the manufacturers would have looked worse by using the 'correct' SI definitions they would have gone for it?
I've found a few times that I've been moderated overrated for posting a contentious comment: in other words, some moderators misuse their points to give their opinion on the conclusion that is being stated. Really moderation should be about the quality of the post: if something is well-argued and presents and interesting perspecive then it deserves to rise above the crowd, even if the conclusion doesn't fit with some people's views. The danger with diametrically opposed mods is that it will turn into a fight between mods to promote posts that fit with their pre-conceived opinions and demote posts that don't.
Your idea of '-1, Misinformed' seems like a good idea at first blush, but the problem is that it's giving moderators license to comment on the conclusion of the post, rather than the quality of the post. It's much better to let the posts with decent references/links, well-reasoned arguments etc. to rise to the fore than have moderators blasting down posts because they think the author got it wrong. That's what replies are for.